DARK TALKS WITH SCREECHING PINES: Why Men Listen to Nature’s Voices

Join us at the 29th Annual Minnesota Men’s Conference September 10-15, 2013 as we invoke deep earth powers: through song, myth and fellowship.

When nature’s voices are ignored and our own language flattens under plastic, technology, and absolutism, it’s time for old stories to be heard again. Born of living rock, water, fire and breath, they blaze the language roads that emerge through authentic, masculine feeling. Men need this ancient art. Such work offers alternatives to cynicism and guffawing celebrities. We also need discriminating ears and the obsidian edges of discourse in order to hold meaningful conversations with one another—or with screeching trees, or deep water or divinity. In 1988 in Minnesota, tracker John Stokes warned, “What you don’t talk with, you don’t understand. What you don’t understand, you fear. What you fear, you want to kill” Who heeds these words?

This year we welcome Francis Weller, MFT, is a psychotherapist, writer and soul activist as our premier guest teacher. Over the last thirty years, he has worked with grief in his practice as a psychotherapist and workshop leader. Beginning in 1997, he began to offer grief rituals as a way for communities to attend the large and small losses that touch each of our lives. In Francis Weller’s words “What has become clear to me is how difficult it is for us to attend to our grief in the absence of community. Carried privately, sorrow lingers in the soul, slowly pulling us below the surface of life and into the terrain of death.”

Due to personal reasons, environmental philosopher David Abram will not be attending the 2013 conference. Our thoughts and blessings go out to David and his family as we honor this very difficult decision to withdraw to care for family.

After your registration is received, a confirmation letter with conference details
will be sent. For out-of-town guests, a charter bus will be available to transport
you between the camp and the Twin Cities airport.

For more information about the bus cost, arrival and departure times, or for more details,e-mail hiddenwine@earthlink.net or call Craig Ungerman at 860-942-1658